Nan walked fast down a cross street. What a relief to be alone. Shouldn't have left Fitzie so abruptly, but couldn't stand her chatter a moment longer. Silly to be so upset; what am I so upset about anyway? My nerves are jumpy as the dickens this winter. In a cold fury of dismay she walked home through the yellow twilight, her chin pressed into her fur neckpiece as she leaned against the wind that blew razorkeen down the long street that led to the Fenway and made her ears sting and her forehead ache. Muffled by closed windows, shattered by the gusty wind, there came to her from the houses on either hand wail and tinkle of music students doing their scales on piano and violin, growls of cellos, trilling of dramatic sopranos. Street of scales; they expect to climb into life up their scales like up ladders. She remembered savagely she hadn't practiced that day. And that Worthington girl, did she ever practice, did she work and contrive to get on, or was everything as easy to her as the bellboy's frightened blush under her smile? And this husband she had picked up, what could he be like? A short loud man in a checked suit probably, with a bulging red vest and a brown derby. I'm glad I didn't see him, men like that are too disgusting. She dug her chin into her fur and battled furiously with the wind. If it'ld only snow it wouldn't be so cold. At length the letters spelling out The Swansea were dark against the light ahead of her, she was in the elevator, the key was clicking softly in the lock of her door. The homelike smell was soothing to her nostrils. Thank heavens, I left the heat on. Before taking off her hat and gloves she stood a moment in the window, her hands over the steampipes. The sky, beyond the hardetched tangle of branches of the Fenway and the purple cubes of the further apartment houses, was a wide empty yellow, chilling to green overhead. Nan felt its bitter emptiness like a rasp on a half-healed wound. With wincing lips she pulled down the shade and turned her back on the window.